Dustin Hoffman graduates from star to director with Quartet. On set, he
maintains harmony among a seasoned British cast

A handsome country pile set in 85 acres of glorious Buckinghamshire parkland, Hedsor House in Taplow is a popular venue for weddings and corporate events. But for some three months recently it took on the appearance of a genteel retirement home, as the location for Quartet, a new film about four retired opera singers and their intertwining, sometimes stormy relationships.

On film sets the artifice is usually apparent, but on the day I visited the Quartet set, it was easy to believe one really was in a retirement home, largely because of the vast number of old people milling around. I strolled among them, a stranger receiving friendly smiles and nods of acknowledgement; without exception they seemed energetic and cheerful. The film boasts a cast of 38 characters, and a generous complement of extras, almost all of whom clearly qualified for a bus pass years ago.

This factor alone is enough to make Quartet a distinctive film in an industry that seems slavishly devoted to meeting the desires of younger audiences. And here’s another: it marks the directing debut of Dustin Hoffman, one of America’s most distinguished film actors – twice an Oscar winner and five times more a nominee. On the Quartet set, Hoffman was a perfect fit; he turned 75 this year.

Hoffman knew ahead of time how he would approach this new chapter in his career. ‘I decided to direct a long time ago,’ he says. ‘But sometimes it can take 40 years to get around to something. I liked this story because it’s about performers who are still able to make a creative contribution – but society feels they’re too old.

‘I’ve been acting in films for about 45 years and like many actors I’ve made a mental list of the things I like and don’t like about directors. One thing I never liked was those directors who had already worked out a scene in their heads. They’re the ones who don’t want their actors to surprise them. Well, I decided I wanted to be surprised.’

Related Articles

That was always likely, given that this is a film exclusively about old people. Potentially it was a daunting prospect for a first-time director. Yet Hoffman could at least draw security from the quality of his leading players, all of them now septuagenarians. Maggie Smith was already earmarked to star before Hoffman came on board, as was Tom Courtenay, who was effectively the film’s prime mover: eight years ago, it was he who first persuaded his old friend and collaborator, the playwright and screenwriter Ronald Harwood, that his stage play Quartet, first produced in 1999, could be effectively adapted for the big screen.

Courtenay’s relationship with Harwood goes back 50 years, when he appeared in Harwood’s play Private Potter, his first starring role on TV. The two men, along with Albert Finney, were Oscar-nominated in 1982 for The Dresser, adapted by Harwood from his own play. Courtenay says that after he urged Harwood to repeat the process and rewrite Quartet as a film, the BBC commissioned a screenplay. All this was some eight years ago; ‘But nothing happened – until Dustin came along.’

In 2008 Hoffman came to star in the London-set film Last Chance Harvey, opposite Emma Thompson, and enjoyed working in Britain. Its cinematographer John de Borman had worked with the producer Finola Dwyer, who was trying to raise money for Quartet, and de Borman told her it might make a suitable directing debut for Hoffman.

Courtenay also suggested Hoffman should consider Pauline Collins for a lead role. And when both Finney and Peter O’Toole (who has now retired from acting) dropped out, fearing the shoot might be too long and arduous, Hoffman approached Billy Connolly, whose stand-up concerts he had enjoyed in the States, to complete the foursome. (Connolly, then a mere 69, was the youngest.) To gild the lily, another British acting great, Michael Gambon, has a role.

In the story’s first part, long-time pals tenor Reggie (Courtenay) and baritone Wilf (Connolly) pass the time peaceably in the fictional retirement home (named Beecham House after the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham). They are friendly with a former colleague, Cissy (Collins), a contralto now in the early stages of dementia.

Their happy equilibrium is rocked by the arrival at Beecham House of Jean (Maggie Smith), a former grande dame of the opera, now distinctly grouchy at being consigned to an old people’s home. Reggie is equally unhappy; he and Jean were once married, but her infidelity caused them to part. Jean and the other three once famously performed and recorded Verdi’s Rigoletto together, and her arrival triggers excitable talk about the quartet reuniting for a gala performance to raise funds for the cash-strapped home. But Reggie won’t speak to Jean, who in any case insists she will never sing again.

Hoffman changed the tone of Quartet with a simple early decision: ‘When I read the script,’ he says, ‘I thought, we have to do this with real musicians, actors and opera singers – retired ones.’ So the casting director Lucy Bevan sent her team out all over Britain, looking for likely candidates in small supporting roles.

‘There’s all these people on set in their 70s, 80s or 90s,’ Hoffman reflects. ‘None of them has been at the top of their game for a long time. No one’s been calling them offering work for 20 or 30 years. So when they got the job they were in disbelief. But they’ve showed up every day at six in the morning, and they’ve worked 12- or 14-hour days with such stamina and passion. It’s made it a different film from anything we had been involved in before. That’s the most heartening aspect of it.’

Inside the house, on a small cramped stage, two of the veterans are having their big moment. Character actors David Ryall and Trevor Peacock, as Beecham House residents George and Harry, get to perform two songs as part of the gala charity concert. They choose Underneath the Arches and Run Rabbit Run, two wartime numbers made famous by the comic duo Flanagan and Allen.

Hoffman, whose reputation as a perfectionist precedes him, asks, ‘One more.’ He wants to ensure their shuffling steps accompanying each song are perfectly in sync. ‘Bugger it,’ Ryall says jovially. ‘We’ll get this done in a couple of minutes.’ Between takes he warms up the audience of extras with old-pro patter. ‘Morecambe and Wise did this stuff so well, didn’t they?’ he says self-deprecatingly.

It’s all charming and endearing, and according to crew members, par for the course whenever the supporting cast members get their time on camera. Someone from the costume department confides, ‘They turn up on set and on time, discuss seasons they’ve spent playing in Frinton in 1974, and get their shots done.’

While Peacock and Ryall warm up the crowd, three of the four leads retire to their trailers and await their big scene. Maggie Smith is not around – her hectic schedule dictates that she also needs to be present for light duties on the Downton Abbey set.

Courtenay, Connolly and Collins are all experienced film actors, but intriguingly Hoffman fascinates them all; his charisma and enduring fame seems to leave them faintly star-struck.

‘Dustin’s inspirational and energetic,’ Pauline Collins tells me. ‘He freely admits when he’s wrong and takes the blame himself if things don’t turn out right.’ Not that this prevented her from airing her views on how she should play Cissy. ‘We have slightly different ideas. Like many people of my age, I’ve experienced dementia within the family. What Dustin has in his memory is playing the character of Rain Man. That was a form of autism, of course. Which is not the same thing. But I’ve teased him that he’s even been trying to get me to walk like Rain Man – which he denies completely.’

I find Connolly strumming on a ukulele when I enter his trailer, but he’s happy to break off and discuss Hoffman. ‘He likes getting things just right. He’s into the minutiae. And he gives great directions, like “Stop acting!” or “Don’t go acting, now.” ’ Hoffman, it seems, wanted his British cast to rein themselves in and downplay their delivery of dramatic lines. ‘Quite right too,’ Connolly says. ‘This reminds me of when I was in Mrs Brown with Judi Dench. You can’t go waving your arms around like you’re in Crossroads or something.’

He recalls Hoffman commenting a few days earlier that while the British make talkies, the Americans make movies. ‘I know what he means,’ Connolly sighs. ‘The British do go on a bit. Yabber-jabber, yabber-jabber.’

Also, in Harwood’s script, Connolly’s Wilf had an eye for women, and often made inappropriate comments to the home’s female staff. ‘But we’ve cut a lot of that stuff,’ Connolly says. ‘It was becoming a bit like a Carry On comedy. After a while it became a little tiresome, and I found I was going off Wilf. So I’d go up to Dustin and say, “I don’t like this next scene,” and he’d say, “I’ve cut it out already, I didn’t like it either.” He’s always way ahead of me.’

Coincidentally, Courtenay also has a ukulele in his trailer, but even more striking is his debonair appearance. One thinks of him as a character actor with a gaunt, haunted look – but today, dressed to the nines in a tuxedo, there’s a hint of the matinee idol about him. ‘Dustin was very keen on the way I looked,’ he admits sheepishly. ‘I’ve never worn so much make-up and had my hair done so much. But Reggie’s love story with Jean is important to Dustin. There’s more of it in the film than there was in the play.’ He glances in a mirror and sighs. ‘Never too late, I suppose – 74!’

Hoffman gleefully recalls that Courtenay initially fought against being made to look handsome. ‘When we first met, Tom wasn’t even sure he wanted to make films any more. He’d been reading poetry on BBC radio and enjoying it. But I told him, “You’re a good-looking guy. You’re a 35-year-old leading man inside.” ’

Still, Courtenay likes Hoffman’s humour and, for all his perfectionism, his easy way with his actors. ‘One day he asked Maggie to do one more take and she let her cane drop to the floor in mock weariness. Dustin said, “Don’t you drop your cane at me!” ’

That sounds like a director enjoying himself, which Hoffman was, largely because of Quartet’s storyline. ‘These days there’s a proliferation of movies in which it’s fashionable to take a cynical view,’ he says. ‘This film doesn’t. It says life is worth it.’

‘You wouldn’t see him as an obvious choice to direct this because it’s opera, which Dustin doesn’t know much about,’ Courtenay says. ‘But in fact it’s a wonderful idea because he’s passionate about people’s last act, our later days, and making them productive. That’s what he loves about the story.’

Filming at Hedsor House in Buckinghamshire. (Photo: Kerry Brown)

I wander back to the set, through another throng of elderly extras, and hear a phrase people have been dropping all day: ‘Running lunch.’ Collins has clued me into what it means. On most film sets there is a fixed break for lunch, but because of the median age of the Quartet cast, food is available all day as and when they want to eat or graze. ‘It keeps their energy up, which is important,’ Hoffman tells me.

He also had to make allowances for the fact that his cast could not get around as swiftly as most. And other factors slowed down Quartet’s progress: ‘The family that owns Hedsor House has a lucrative business with weddings at weekends,’ Hoffman says. ‘So every Friday we had to clear all the rigging away, then put it back every Monday morning.’

At this point, having a wealthy actor as the film’s director came in useful. ‘I gave some of my money to the production,’ Hoffman admits. He won’t be drawn further, but it meant the number of shooting days available stretched from an unworkable 40 to an achievable 54.

His generosity showed itself in other ways: he asked all the supporting cast for photos of themselves from long ago, in their prime, and in tribute to them, placed them on the film’s end credits. The result is hugely affecting.

Hoffman recalls that Connolly had coined a phrase to sum up what Quartet is all about: don’t die till you’re dead. Hoffman says, ‘What it means is, strive for the best in yourself, even in the last act of your life.’ He laughs quietly. ‘I can relate to that.’